Trip the geek fantastic at the home of #RealTimeChem

This is the longest day of your life…

Hello! Long time no post. I’ve been a bit neglectful of my blog, I apologise. A more regular service shall soon commence I promise you.

However, I have something else to talk about today and that is to promote a Twitter based Chemistry event this coming 7th of November called Real Time Chemistry Day. I’ll be promoting it up until that time. #RealTimeChem has been around for a while on twitter every so often, I didn’t create the hashtag, but I certainly like it and think it would be a great idea to get more chemists tweeting about their lab experiences, good or bad.

[update: @jessthechemist on Twitter created a storify page on #RealTimeChem about 5 months ago and she’ll be continuing to add to it during the event on 7th November.]

Here’s are the basics:

All day on the 7th November I and (hopefully) many other chemists will be tweeting about our everyday life in the chemistry laboratory. What papers we are reading, what chemical reactions we are conducting, what wacky laboratory based antics we are up to etc etc

The idea is that we tweet a day in the life of a chemist, in real time. This should give everyone an insight into what it is we do in laboratories everyday across the world.

All things that happen on the day can be tweeted, good or bad. I’m sure the former shall out weigh the latter.

Pictures of your day are most welcome.

Everyone who works in a chemistry laboratory across the whole wide world is free to participate as much or as little as they want, no pressure.

Each tweet should contain the following hashtag #RealTimeChem so that we know it is part of the event.

Just to reiterate, It’s on the 7th November ALL DAY. (i.e. for however long you are in the lab).

That’s about it! Enjoy the day when it comes and let everyone know!

You might ask why the 7th November? It was suggested to me by a friend on twitter, Dr Jess (who also runs the brilliant “The Organic Solution” blog) Well that was the birthday of Marie Curie who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two separate fields, being physics and chemistry. I think that’s a pretty appropriate date, don’t you?